The Broadway musical Saturday Night Fever will close on Dec. 30 after 500 performances, Variety reports. The show — which received mostly negative reviews when it opened on Oct. 21, 1999 — is the victim of declining ticket sales.
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Jennifer Lopez will star in the thriller Enough, described as Sleeping with the Enemy meets Double Jeopardy. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lopez will play a woman who discovers her husband is evil. Sandra Bullock was originally attached to star.
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Ben Affleck made a surprise Election Day appearance on the politically charged Rosie O'Donnell Show this morning to urge viewers to get out and vote. The star of the upcoming romantic drama Bounce went on to say that he was voting for Democrat Al Gore for president because "I think my Al Gore imitation is better than my George W. Bush imitation." Meanwhile, Warner Bros. is denying reports that it initially balked at O'Donnell's decision to air a clip of Barbra Streisand delivering a pro-Gore speech on yesterday's show. The outspoken Democrat reportedly threatened to quit if the studio pulled the speech. "Warner Bros. and Telepictures have, and always will, support Rosie in her desire to voice her opinion on her show," the studio said in a statement. "Since Barbra Streisand's political comments are in an episode airing the day before the election, we felt we had an obligation to notify our stations of the political material that was in the show
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Producers of Frasier are fuming over a report by the gay media watchdog group GLAAD that claims controversial yakker Dr. Laura Schlessinger successfully pressured Paramount to pull from syndication a repeat of the show that parodied her. (Paramount produces Schlessinger's struggling talk show as well as Frasier). The episode — which last aired on Dec. 2, 1999 — featured Christine Baranski as Dr. Nora, an obnoxious and outspoken radio host. "Every other episode in that season has aired three or four times [in syndication]," Frasier co-creator/executive producer David Lee told the New York Post. "But 'Dr. Nora' was completely missing each time. My partners and I are royally peeved." Paramount is denying the charge, insisting that the episode will air again in syndication in February. — Michael Ausiello
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Despite brutal reviews, ABC's Growing Pains reunion movie on Sunday attracted a healthy 15.1 million viewers, the network's largest audience for a Wonderful World of Disney picture in nine months. Fox was also happy with its Sunday night season premiere of The X-Files — the first episode featuring new castmember Robert Patrick. The show won the night in the coveted adults 18-49 demographic earned its best ratings since last November. Meanwhile, the CBS miniseries, Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, was DOA, attracting a paltry 10.9 million viewers.
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Just a week after it was revealed that her character on The Practice was preggers, Camryn Manheim has announced to People Online that she, too, is expecting her first child — a boy — in April. The Emmy-winning actress's rep tells Reuters that Manheim — who reportedly plans to raise the child by herself — was "not speaking about the father."
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Goldie Hawn's production company is developing a TV movie for NBC based on the brutal murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard, Variety reports. The Matthew Shepard Story will chronicle the events surrounding Shepard's 1998 killing from the perspective of his mother, Judy. MTV and HBO are also working on Shepard-related pics, but NBC's project is the only one officially sanctioned by the Shepard family.
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It was March 5, 1982, when actor/comic John Belushi died from a drug overdose at the young age of 33. A member of the original 1975 Saturday Night Live cast, Belushi was equally well-known for his performance as Tasmanian devil-cum-frat boy John "Bluto" Blutarsky in the 1978 comedy Animal House.
Since the comedian's passing, much light has been shed on his real-life, id-driven existence, one full of through-the-night partying fueled by various vices. Actor Bruce McGill, who played Animal House's motorcycle-riding Daniel Simpson "D-Day" Day (and currently can be seen portraying golfing great Walter Hagen in The Legend of Bagger Vance), bittersweetly recalls Belushi's penchant for "living life to the fullest."
"Hell, I was living it with him," McGill tells TV Guide Online, pointing out that, at that time, Belushi was burning the candle at both ends. "The thing that people don't realize is that John was still doing Sat
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Jerry Seinfeld and his wife, Jessica Sklar, became first-time parents of a baby girl today. According to The Associated Press, Sascha Seinfeld was born at an undisclosed New York hospital. Both parents and baby said to be doing well, yada, yada, yada...
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The site of Survivor: Australian Outback is reportedly haunted. According to local residents, hundreds of Aboriginals were slaughtered by Europeans a century ago near picturesque Herbert River Gorge — the approximate location where the CBS reality show sequel (premiering Jan. 28) is being filmed. One of the residents told The Australian newspaper that cattlemen have heard "cries and screaming" near the gorge at night. Surely, it couldn't be scarier than the sight of naked Rich?
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